Wednesday, November 01, 2006

First he gets done for fraud, then we find out he tried to get eggs from his research assistants and now it turns out he was even going to associate himself with the Russian Mafia:

The defense also said the embezzlement charges, involving funds provided by corporate sponsors, should be dropped, as most of the funds in question are accounted for or still in the bank. Hwang stood by his previous claims that suspicious personal items--such as a car for himself and his wife--were bought with money earned from lectures and publications. Hwang said that some of the allegedly misappropriated money was used for expenses in pursuing unsuccessful projects, which included an effort to clone a mammoth that involved the Russian mafia, and another project to clone a Siberian tiger native to North Korea. In official documents, he claimed to have used the money to buy cows for research.

That's sure a long way to fall from the top of the mountain to...well... this. The only thing I want to know is, what on earth were the Russian mafia wanting with a Wooly Mammoth?